Evenstar, Evenstranger
by Lasgalendil
Summary: Prerna was alive, but taken by the enemy. Now Ida Anderson will do anything to get her back, including going into the Hobbit storyline itself to battle the fandom's most fearsome enemy: the Mary Sue. Suit up with Ida and Pedro as they take on the task of Sue-Slayers alongside Legolas and Gimli in an unlikely Fellowship. Can these four misfits save Arda? No, no they can't…
1. We Are Legalese if You Please

**WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS FRANK DESCRIPTIONS OF MONSTERS, MARY SUES, MALE NUDITY, AND A SHIT TON OF SINDARIN.**

**MAY CONTAIN PEARS*.**

_Here begins EVENSTAR, EVENSTRANGER* the second part of the history of the Sue-Slayers._

_The first part is called EVENSTAR, EVENSTILL*, since the events recounted in it are dominated by the meetings of modern Men Prerna Prashad, Ida Anderson and Pedro "Peter Parker" Morales and the final members of the Fellowship of the Ring: Legolas, haunted by gulls and the impending death of his friend, and Gimli, now bent and senile with age. It tells of the misdeeds and perils of all the members of their Unexpected Friendship, until the rescue of Gimli and resurrection of Legolas and their departure together into the West._

_The third part tells of the last defense against Sanity, and the end of the mission of the Sue-Slayers in EVENSTAR, EVENSTAY._

* * *

You know how sometimes when you dream everything is just so damned vivid, but right in the middle of it you feel that terrifying jolt like you've been paralyzed or thrown over a cliff and only right as you were dying horrifically you wake up? Don't worry about it—it's usually just the Sue-Slayer clocking onto his shift.

I guess I should probably preface that a bit, but I have to warn you, it'll take a while. And you've got to promise not to become a boiling squid of anger or skip ahead in boredom. My name is Ida Anderson, by the way. It's in the summary. I once saw a man's kidney grow tentacles, tear itself out a ragged hole in his back, and go slapping across my kitchen floor*. If you don't already know who I am, that's awesome. That means you didn't read the previous installment in this quite frankly batshittingly insane saga, and that's good because to be honest, it doesn't really depict me in the best light.

…hey! Don't go read it now. I'd prefer a fresh start. So _le suilam_, stranger! _Mae govannen_. It's great to have this opportunity to convince someone I'm not an utter shithead. Just uh, just skip the next paragraph, okay?

If you DO know who I am, presumably because you've read the previous story, _Evenstar, Evenstill_, I know what you're thinking and all I can say is "No, fuck _you_." Stop sending me flames. I've already disabled anonymous reviews, so don't even try. Please note that all correspondence regarding the class action lawsuit resulting from the publication of that memoir ought to be directed to fanfiction. net's legal department and the Tolkien Estate, not me. Go find the email addresses yourselves, yiffers.

[If you happened to stumble on the last paragraph accidentally, new reader, forgive my pottymouth. You'll find it's not typical of me.]

Shit. Where was I? Ah, yes. On to our tale.

It all happened a little bit like this…

* * *

*Pears? I hate pears!

*Because Prerna thinks that the whole "Evenstar, Evensomething" thing gives us a sort of brand recognition, and our working title of _This Fic is Full of Ungolianth: Seriously, Mellon, Avo Garo _seemed a bit unintelligible to the average reader.

*I still think _Legolas Dies At The End_ would've been better.

*No, I made that part up. Hair! Hair! Haaairrr! Camel Holocaust! I've been told by Peter that this whole thing reads like _Lord of the Rings_ met _Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ at a Three Arm Sally male pattern baldness benefit concert and had one fugly love child. I told him that our entire adventure reads more like gay Brienne of Tarth and blatino Achoo son of Asneeze in a terrible _Hot Fuzz: the Middle-earth Madness Round_ YouTube fanfiction spin-off with Shawn Spenstar DJ'ing the soundtrack. My brother Scott says it's a surprisingly accurate description.

"A black sheriff?" Peter scoffed. "I guess it worked in _Blazing Saddles_…" Forrest Gump once said life is like a box of chocolates, but he was wrong. Mine is like a Mel Brooks movie meets slasher flick set in Middle-earth. The Legs and the Gim-man aren't helping much, as you might imagine. That whole 'count the dead bad guys' competition was cute and all back in the Third Age or so, but seven centuries out with the tally still running? Yeesh. Those quintuple digits are starting to be a bit sickening.


	2. Epiprologue

It was a bright, brilliant May afternoon, the grass on the quad was a vibrant green and landscaping flowers and the bushes and ornamental trees were in full bloom.

Was it as artificial as hell? Did it still sort of smell like gasoline and garbage? Was NYC still sprawling in the background? Fuck yeah. But just for one moment, one tiny moment, you'd almost think you were in Ithilien or the gardens of Isengard before the treason. [I would know.] _Hey, Prer. Wish you could've seen this…_

But Prerna was gone, Spiderman was cramming for his dissertation in August, and all the trappings of my old life had disappeared. I'd lost my job, my apartment, my girlfriend, and my Unicorn back in January, and 'might have been clinically depressed' is the biggest understatement of the century. Scott said I needed a new start, and made me work my ass off to get one.

Motivation. It's one of the few times having an ex-Marine for a big brother comes in handy*.

I took the GED and SAT in March, and Sal'd used all her combined social work compassion, networking* and know-how and somehow gotten Columbia to overlook my both my felon status and late application for a probationary summer semester. If I managed to carry my classes with a 3.2 GPA I'd be admitted full time in the fall. Things were as shitty as they'd ever been, sure, but they were finally starting to look up.

Speaking of looking up, one of my classmates—I thought her name was Keisha, but couldn't quite remember—had on the world's tightest, finest booty shorts I'd ever seen…and I didn't think it had anything to do with the denim. She had long, lean legs and muscle tone like Lupita Nyong'o. She wore her thick hair slicked back into an intricate array of cornrows, and her sculpted face was made all the better with tones of muted make-up. I don't think I'd ever seen her wear the same shade of nail polish twice in the three weeks I'd known her, and she walked in those plain plastic flip-flops like a queen. I'd not spoken with her a lot, just a quick, stammered 'hey' before class and the occasional in-class discussion, but it was summertime, and between the sunlight, those legs and her winning smile I figured I might as well give it a shot.

I'd just squared my shoulders and steeled myself to go talk to her when I got cockblocked [can you call it cockblocked? clitclipped?] by a well-meaning classmate. I was the non-traditional student, at least eight years older than the rest of the Freshmen Comp gang, and the sorority sisters among them all went out of their way to "be nice" to me. It was all a bit vomit-inducing and infuriating, but it wasn't faked or insincere, so I let it slide. After all, they were eighteen year-old kids, still finding themselves. At least _they_ had an excuse to be a bit socially awkward.

"You looking forward to the weekend, Ida?" Ashlee Mann asked me.

"Oh, yeah," not really. Two ten hour shifts scrubbing toilets in the campus center. Work-study sucked ass, but it was the only way I could afford to go, even with Scott and Vanessa's balls-to-the-wall support. "I've got three wild nights of clubbing all lined up."

She laughed at that, and put her arm through mine in that chummy, sisterly sort of way I saw other girls do. "I guess you've got the advantage there," she said. "You don't have to worry about getting caught with a fake or anything."

No, no I didn't. But that's okay, since I've already a convicted felon and a former addict with the drug busts and the NA chips to prove it. But those were things my classmates didn't need to know about me, and not something I would readily share. It was personal, and I might tell her one day if we were ever friends or partners, but right now we were just classmates, and I had a feeling once fall came I'd never see these people again. I was fine for a summertime friendship fling while their sorority sisters were all abroad, at internships, back home with the folks or something, but I wasn't their type, and wouldn't rank more than acquaintance on their facebook friends list. But this was my new self, my new lease on life, and I wouldn't let Old Ida the Asshole come back to ruin that, not even her ghost. I just forced a smile, and told Ashlee sagely, "be careful."

Shit, I realized. I sounded just like Scott. And nobody wanted the killjoy big brother hanging out with them. So I shut up.

"Come on, girl," Emily Wicket wheedled, taking my other arm. "You're so lame. At least come out with us tonight. Just this once." Easy for her to say. She was a party queen, and still managed to pull (mostly) passing grades without hardly studying. She was also here—like most of them—on her daddy's money, and didn't have to worry about being sober enough to work the next morning.

"Wait, are you guys kidnapping me?" I joked as they frog-marched me towards the steps.

"It's the only way we could think of to get you to come," Ashlee shrugged, her bobbed blonde pigtails bouncing. Girl was the picture of the pink-obsessed Lolita child. "C'mon, it'll be fun!"

"You need to lighten up and live a little," Ems affirmed.

Yep, that's me. Hi, everybody. For all of you out there wondering, I'm the morose one with the Chameleon Circuit T between two gorgeous, giggling schoolgirls who were only questionably legal. They were adults, sure, they could vote, buy cigarettes, and enlist, but they were still fucking teenagers. It was a bit weird, really.

"Yeah," a deep, husky woman's voice said, somewhere to my left. "You should come out with us, Ida."

…Keisha. My freshman comp muse, bare-legged booty shorts and all. That settled it, then. I was going clubbing with a bunch of kids, fake ID's or no.

"Alright, alright," I caved, trying not to flush as my heart pounded in my ears. I hadn't dated since Prerna. Not even casually. "I'll come. But you've got to let me get home and change first." I—like always—was significantly underdressed.

"You're fine!" Ashlee giggled.

"Yeah, someone's got to be the ugly friend for the hot guys to hit on first," Ems winked. She had slightly gapped front teeth, dark, wavy Undómiel hair and a smattering of freckles that made her equal parts button-cute and windswept all at once.

"Whoa, calm your tits," I told her. "I'll have you know I'm an excellent wingman."

They all three looked stunned.

I started backpedalling immediately. _Shit, Ida. Three girls want to make friends (and possibly more?) with you and you scared them away already?_ "Uh, sorry. I'm a bit of a gamer, so—"

They burst into simultaneous giggles. "Oh, Ida—!" Ems gasped, doubling over. "You're hilarious!"

"Some of the things you say," Ashlee hiccoughed.

Keisha's lips pulled into a sick, twisted grin. "You've got quite a mouth, girl."

_Yeah, you too._ She'd gone with a nude, almost chocolately lipstick today, and you could count every matte ridge and wrinkle in their pouty perfection.

"Yeah!" Ashlee opined. "Where do you get it all?"

Eighteen months in juvy and a little stint in Bayview women's correctional facility, to tell the truth. "Well, you know. My brother's a marine," I stammered instead.

"Oooh!" Ems tugged my arm, almost beggarly. "Is he hot? Is he single? Can we _meeeet_ him?" I'd say she had a thing for guys in uniform, but the truth is Ems just had a thing for _guys._ She was in that whole 'badder is better' stage of life right now. I'd know, since when I was her age I was the bad one who got dates who just wanted to piss their parents off or live a little before settling down with Mrs. Right. It made for some pretty tumultuous tween years and a pretty fucked up view of relationships in general.

"Uh, yes, and no, he's…" well, not married, but I think Vanessa now counted as his common-law wife or something.

"…taken," she finished for me, crestfallen.

"Don't mind her," Keisha told me. "She's just upset because all the National Guard guys are gone for the summer."'

Which then prompted Ashlee and Ems to launch into how all the good guys were gone for the summer for like, internships and jobs and stuff and how college was so lame and lonely without them, blah, blah, blah etc. I tried not to wince, and did my best to nod along my sympathy, but out of the corner of my eye I could see Keisha making 'talky face' with her hands and raising one austere eyebrow at me as if to say, "Seriously?"

I managed to choke back a snort. Somehow I got the impression that both Ash and Ems' egos were still pretty fragile, and friendly as they were things would get cool rather quickly if I'd laughed at their shitty summer predicament. Oh, girls, girls, if only you'd managed to pass freshman comp the first time around.

_Nobody likes you, Scott_, I told that big brotherly part of my brain. _Fuck off_.

"What about you?" Keisha interrupted their chatter, one hand on her hip, the other resting playfully under her chin. "What sort of guys you after?"

Hello. My name is Ida Anderson and I'm a LESBIAN! …yeah, no. "Uh, well, you know…" I stammered some excuses about school and new starts and just needing some fucking time alone to focus and study—

"Oh. My. God!" Ashlee squealed, throwing herself at me in a horrible hug. By that time I'd been seven moths celibate, and getting clobbered by a braless, perky teenager who had no concept of personal space when it came to consoling messy break-ups wasn't exactly helping ye olde libido.

"That's so sad. That's crazy! You're like totally super cool I can't believe some guy would dump you!"

"Really, Ash, I'm fine," I mumbled awkwardly, arms pinned to my sides and my bookbag slipping.

"It's settled, then. We're setting you up tonight!" Ems assured me. "I can text my Sisters and see where our frat guys will be—" Yeah, after you went on at length about how all the good ones were out of town or taken. Thanks. But I suppose in match-making, like Christmas, it was the thought that counted most.

"Set her up?" Ashlee rounded on her, finally letting me go. "No way! We're totally going to get him back for her. Can't you see she's heartbroken?"

Yeah. Messy break-ups sucked. I'd gone through my fair share, and I'd been torn up by the whole Lareina thing for months afterwards. But Prerna had fixed all of that, she'd fixed _me_, and now my fiancée was in a rest home slowly deteriorating in a coma and I couldn't even see her. Mom and Pop Prashad had even gone out of their way to get a restraining order filed so their baby girl could have some propriety on her deathbed.

But I had to move on. Had to get past it. The girl—the woman—I loved was gone. It was a new summer, a new year, and if I couldn't let her go now, I knew I never would.

_And if of ships I now should sing what ship would come to me?_

_What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a sea?_

_Quit it, dipshit,_ I berated myself. Legs and Gimli were in the West where they belonged, I'd been admitted against all hopes and odds to school, been given a new chance at a better life, and was being actively pursued by sort of somewhat friends.

I took a deep breath, and sighed. _This is it girl. Time to move on._

Carpe diem. Hakuna matata*. Namárië.

"You okay?" Keisha asked me coolly.

"I'm fine," I lied to them all, plastering a smile to my face. "Really. Let's just go party and get fucking wasted and have fun like normal college freshmen, alright?"

"Totally," Ashlee agreed, and Ems nodded enthusiastically. Keisha only grinned.

We took our first steps down the Lowe Library stairs together. Not friends yet, certainly not lovers, but the summer was new, the night was young, and the semester—like my life—was so full of promise.

…And then it happened. Some asshole in a candy-red sports car gunned up through the gates, over the sidewalk and across the quad, that car tearing up grass and dirt in a close, tight spun circle at 90 mph that a stuntman couldn't've done. Sunbathers were screaming, people were running, cell phones and tablets were whipping out and recording. Ash and Ems both shrieked and clung to me, and I wrenched Keisha's hand to pull her back up on the steps. That car came flying at us and we were frozen together in terror and awe when at the last second it turned, continuing that graceful, arcing, balletic twirl while the driver's side door opened and an Elf stepped out, never breaking speed, never breaking stride and walked right up to us with a careless yet oh-so-controlled flip of his long hair. The car came to a slow-spun halt behind him.

That svelte physique. Gravity defying pace. The suave smirk on the very corners of his lips.

_….How? When? Why? What the hell—_? my brain struggled to process.

Legs removed his sunglasses in one smooth motion and shot those crystal clear eyes at me in a picture perfect smoulder. "Did somebody call for a well dressed man?" he asked.

Beside me, Ems very, very timidly raised her hand.

* * *

*Thank the fucking Flying Spaghetti Monster. If it weren't for Scott, you'd all be listening to the morose non-happenings of Bella the immobile Swan right now.

*Turns out, she _was_ sleeping with someone in the Admission's office, after I jokingly asked her. But since they'd been a thing for three years already and got married later that summer, she said it didn't really count.

*You've got to put your behind in the past, as a wise warthog once said.


End file.
